Words and pictures

 

New Lockdown, Third Week, Friday

 

 

      

 

 

The real danger in adding my tiny number of ‘1^st Editions’ to the catalogue raisonné, is not the peril of advertising stealable wealth (one of my books I checked on a 1^st edition web site, and it cost three times more to send the book from the USA than the actual cost of the thing itself!) but rather the danger of the books themselves; once looked at and opened up I began reading them.

     

 

 The one that I am re-reading at the moment is called ‘One’ – a dystopian novel by the American author David Karp, where the benevolent government regards individuality as heresy and tries to root it out.  The central character is a lip-reading English Professor called Burden who is employed as a government informant who writes reports on the heretical things that his colleagues say and which he transcribes every evening.  Burden thinks that he does a valuable and governmentally appreciated job, and his own self-worth shows that he is well on the way to the heresy of individualism himself, though of course he does not recognize it.  It is however, recognized by the inquisitor character in the novel called Lark who feels an instinctive revulsion when he hears Burden and tries to claim him as someone to be ‘saved’.

     The novel was published in America in 1953 and you can tell that Karp is indebted to the 1948 publication of ‘1984’ by Orwell and perhaps a memory of the Grand Inquisitor’s Tale in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’.

     I think in this re-read, I am more interested in what the characters are actually saying rather than the action of the narrative: the difference in reading the novel as a piece of literary sci-fi and reading it as a discussion about the possibility of human freedom and independence in a caring society – and I feel that I should scatter a fair number of quotation marks in the last part of that sentence!

     It’s just as well that I am (re)enjoying the book because as an artifact it is interesting without being valuable.  It lacks its dust cover; the front cover has sun damage; the spine is a little tatty; there is a chunk out of the margin of page 11; the back cover is sun damaged; there is slight foxing on the edges; it has one of my ‘Ex libris’ stickers inside – in other words, it’s an interesting first edition, but basically worthless to a collector!  But it is still, at least to me, rather remarkable that this ‘modern’ novel is just three years younger than me, and reading the original hardback is somehow more of an experience than reading the Penguin paperback edition that I also possess!

 

My paintings and prints are now catalogued and I am determined to find a way to display the ones that have not been looked at for some time.  I remember that the National Gallery has a downstairs area where paintings are displayed floor to ceiling, the sort of thing that you can see in a painting by

Zoffany of the Uffizi in Florence.  These paintings (in the National) where not displayed in the main collection, but it was thought better to put them on show in that crowded way rather than have them lurk in some depository.  A good idea I think and one that I have decided to adopt on the sides of the bookcases in the ‘library’.  The smaller etchings can be placed there, they can be seen and, more importantly, they can easily be moved around to gain new perspectives.

     I have realized that the positions of some of the paintings have not changed since we moved into the house, and I have also realized that the glass of some of the paintings has not been cleaned for the same period of time.  When the grime of years has been removed, the paintings will live again!

 New Lockdown, Week 3, Thursday

 

Was it really six months ago that I had my last dental treatment?  I know that the perception of time has been different during the various periods of various types of lockdown, but still!  Six months from November going backwards would take us back to May.  What that when one of my teeth broke?  Time really is tricky nowadays; normal life is like participating in an episode of The Twilight Zone where some clever Sci-Fi writer plays around with the temporal concepts that we take for granted.  Or you could assume that my reaction is one which is quite normal when anyone thinks about going to the dentist.

 

     Talking of which, I managed not to miss the last part of Hostel III.  Try as I undoubtedly did, by ostentatiously ignoring the screen and reading my mobile phone instead, I was drawn to look at the passing action – and was drawn in by the violence porn that makes up the franchise.

     The premiss is that there are very rich people who will pay vast sums of money to spectate at what are live snuff spectacles where, while being served drinks by fetishly clad waitresses (looking, I have to admit like live versions of something from the soft-porn imagination of artist Allen Jones) they place bets on how and how long the death-throws of the unfortunate victims, safely separated from the rich voyeurs by floor to ceiling plate glass – no blood splatters on them!

     Amid the bloodletting, the gratuitous bloodletting, I might add – I did begin to wonder about the attraction of this sort of slasher movie, and especially the elite group with the money to pay to watch such things.

     It reminded me of The Purge where the bloodletting there was to secure the regime of another wealthy (white) group dedicated to the ritual destruction of those deemed surplus to requirements.  It was the emphasis of a wealthy elite travelling in darkened windowed limos, that made me link it to the ‘customers’ in Hostel III, another wealthy elite, rich and depraved.  And that brings us to QAnon, the ultimate absurdity of conspiracy theories with the same emphasis on a seemingly untouchable elite doing unspeakably nasty things.  These films and this conspiracy theory obviously touch some sort of emotional dark fairy tale need in some people who believe that the horrors of the world must be linked to some directed malevolent force.

     Perhaps in previous times this belief could have been directed towards the Devil and Hell – but even there you could say that the creation of the devil and hell were part of the ways in which the previous religious elite cemented their hold over the fearful imaginations of the paying customers in their churches and their religious wealth allowed them to do unspeakable things – one only has to look at the history of the papacy to see corruption and depravity at its hypocritical worst.

     Financial inequality in the world means that real wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very, very few – and that minority has and will always try and behave with the impunity that they believe their money entitles them to.  During the Covid crisis the super-rich have become richer and the inequality is getting gallopingly worse. 

     The poster boy for wealth without responsibility or concern is of course Trump.  He clearly thinks that laws, the constitution and social norms are, as Leona Helmsley said in 1989, “only for the little people.”  And then she was convicted of income tax evasion.  Helmsley’s comeuppance was over thirty years ago, and since then we have had more of the super-rich brought down by sex scandals than by their everyday theft.  Trump paid 750 dollars in taxes last year in the USA and he boasted about sexual molestation.  When is he going to get his comeuppance?  Losing the election is not enough, he must lose money as well, and a prison term would do him no harm!

     QAnon is ridiculous and intellectually insulting, but there is a tiny elite manipulating the levers of government for their own advantage, but they do it in full sight.  Trump promised to “drain the swamp” but stuffed his cabinet with the super-rich and made them richer by his tax ‘reforms’.  He put wildly inappropriate people in government agencies and encouraged them to foster big business, fossil fuels, banks and all the other agencies of everyday life and profit for the few.

     Charles Wilson said in a senate hearing when Eisenhower wanted him to be Secretary of Defense, “What is good for General Motors is good for the country” – and he had millions of dollars in stock in the company.  It is perhaps unfair that that quotation is the only thing that most people remember about Wilson, and it has come to represent a particular view of capitalism in society.  But Trump has tried his best to make the ethos of that disturbing belief true in his so-called government.

     70 odd million Americans voted for Trump, the second largest pool of any presidential candidate – but Trump has never governed for the American people, only for those who are rich, no, only for the very rich.

     QAnon is the ‘bread and circuses’ distraction for those who believe that they are being manipulated by a tiny minority of perverts, so they do not see the Big Money that really does the dirty work.

     The sooner the obscenity of Trump and his shameless supporters are consigned to history the better.  Whatever Biden may be, he has shown himself to be a fundamentally decent sort of human – and I will settle for that for the next four years as a way of recovering from the disaster of the last four years.

Cold research

New Lockdown, Third Week, Wednesday

 

It was cold this morning and even I questioned the wisdom of wearing T-shirt and shorts with open sandals on my earlyish morning bike ride.  Admittedly, I was wearing a windcheater, mask and helmet which added to the general warmth, but my hands were definitely less than warm.  I mention this because, even when my legs are cold to the touch I do not feel too much discomfort, therefore for me to complain of the cold means that it’s, well, cold.

     It did get better during the day and we were able to have the window of the living room open without too much discomfort, but the reality of the second half of November is beginning to make itself felt.  And that is depressing because we have months of non-summer to look forward (!) to.

     The good news is that the swimming pool should re-open on Monday with the same restrictions as previously, that is, only ten people allowed into the pool during any one hour, meaning that the pool will have to keep to a maximum of two people per lane and reserving your place is essential.

     I have just checked and the booking app has the activities for Monday 22^nd of November listed, but greyed out at the moment, so they should become active towards the end of this week.  I will have to check in daily to ensure a place as, believe it or not, the 7 am slot for swimming is quite popular!

     I have to admit that it will be relief to get back into the groove of early morning swimming, as I am not the world’s greatest bed-lazer.  Although the is an initial spasm of resentment when the alarm does off at 6.15 am, it soon passes and I knuckle down to demands of the day and I think that I am becoming more or a ‘morning person’ than a ‘late night denizen’ – especially as I usually go to bed at around 10 pm nowadays!

     And perhaps the early morning start will encourage me to start filling out my notebook again.  This, of course, depends on what the swimming pool café is allowed to do.  If they can serve a limited number of patrons who sit physically distanced then that is ideal for my creative exercise.  If not, I really will have to make time to start a tradition of filling in the thing at another period in the day.

 

My Catalogue Raisonné is taking shape, and, at the moment, I am bogged down in the detail of the thing.  Getting accurate measurements and remembering (which I think I have not in my notes) that height goes before width in the dimensions of paintings and prints is a trick I should have learned by now.

     Finding out more details about the Habitat prints is becoming very difficult.  In 1999, the Habitat store in the centre of Cardiff had a scheme whereby a number of their employees were given training and the opportunity to produce a limited-edition print.  I bought three of the prints, two of which I have, and the third got lost in the move from Cardiff to Catalonia (together with a raku plate depicting fish).  I cannot fully decipher the signatures and there appears to be no information on the web about the scheme or the artist printmakers.

     Just to give you some sort of idea about the quality of the sales assistants in Habitat at the time, one of the printmakers with whom I spoke was actually a fully trained architect, but he couldn’t get work as an architect and so working in Habitat was at least in or around some sort of cutting edge design.

     I have Googled what I think the names are but have had no luck yet.  I will print out their signatures and see if anyone out there recognizes the handwriting or the signatures.   

 

 

I would dearly like to find out more about the consequences (if any) of the scheme with what happened next in these young print maker's careers.  Do get in touch if any of what I’ve mentioned happening twenty years ago rings any bells.

     And, before you ask, I have tried to contact what is left of Habitat these days, and they are only taking queries about problems in sales and delivery owing to the pressures of Covid, so no luck there.   I am patient – up to a point and will be satisfied with eventual knowledge as long as it comes soon!

Ease of expression

New Lockdown, third week, Monday

 These are the first words that I have typed with my new keyboard.  After many years of good-natured abuse of my previous keyboard, it has finally, if not quite given up the ghost, then it has decided to be whimsical with it allowing certain key keys to work.  It is difficult and frustrating to have to check every word that contains an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ to find out whether the damn thing has worked.

     Rather than allow my default position to come into play (i.e. buying new immediately) I allowed myself to be influenced by Toni who suggested (not unreasonably) that, armed with cotton buds and wet wipes, I attempt first to clean the thing.

     A determined cleaning of a keyboard is immensely shaming because of the sheer amount of filth that you are able to dislodge from between the keys (in spite of the fact that you had, you really had gone over the keyboard regularly with moist tissues to clean it) and the shocking amount of detritus that falls out when you turn the keyboard upside down and gently knock it about a bit.

     And, I managed to convince myself, it all really made a difference.  Except it didn’t, and wishful thinking does not supply missing letters, but Amazon does.

     So, within hours of placing the order, I am now the proud and much poorer possessor of a new Magic Keyboard. 

     The new version of the keyboard is smaller and thinner that what I suppose I ought to refer to as my old ‘vintage’ keyboard.  The function keys are the same size as the letter keys and the rechargeable battery is built in and charged via a lightening thingy.  There is less key travel than in my old one, and the old separate tack pad looks as though it comes from a separate universe and is nothing like the same size and colour as the new keyboard.  But it works and I am damned if I am going to pay Apple prices for purely aesthetic cosmetic reasons – which possibly shows that I am not a ‘true’ Apple owner!

      So far, so good.  The keyboard appears to be working well and it is a relief not to have to look at each word with suspicion to see if the most common vowel has made an appearance!

 

 

 

There is something deliciously ironic about Johnson having to self-isolate while averring that No 10 is a Covid-secure environment, in spite of publicity photographs released showing Johnson without a mask and inside the appropriate physical distance from the MP who later proved to be Covid positive.  Johnson doesn’t really seem to learn from past infections.  But then ¡he doesn’t really seem to learn essential lessons from anything, so perhaps no surprise there.  Again.

     And to think this was the week that Johnson was going to re-set his chaotic ‘government’ after breaking friends with his bestie and finally going to get the easiest trade agreement in history.  Withering contempt does not even come close to what I feel for that vicious charlatan.  Well, he won’t have Cummings to blame for things going less than well (!) when the end of the year finds the UK totally unprepared for anything that is likely to happen.

 

I spent my time on the bike this morning wondering if I would get back home before the rains.  It was one of those day when what you thought the day was going to be like depended on which direction you looked in: to the south east the sky was bright and there was some glimpses of sun; to the north west the low cloud cover was dark and, as I cycled nearer to Port Ginesta I actually put my lights on!

     In the UK, I would have said that rain was inevitable, but by the time I had turned around at Port Ginesta and started to make my way back, the sun came out and, although not entirely convincing, it hung around for a while to make the journey more positive.

     Now, we are in the customary ‘brightly dull’ weather at which Castelldefels excels. And which gives hope for future sunshine.  I hope that is frequently realized, even when things look hopelessly dank!

 

The first steps have been taken towards making a Catalogue Raisonné of my ‘artistic’ holdings a reality.  I don’t think that there is any point in producing a purely academic version, so I think that I will make it a chatty one and use the art described as a way of encouraging more discursive writing.  The technical bits I can attempt to make as academic as is required, but the descriptions can be a little looser and, as ever, a trifle more self-indulgent.

     I can tell that I am going to have problems with dates and names.  Most of the art works are not dated and the names are either indecipherable or not there.  And for the single piece of Ewenny Pottery that survived my childhood fingers – how to describe it and date it?  And if pottery is included, why not glass, even though most of my glass is commercially produced and at the moment it is in storage because neither of us is drinking very much wine at the moment? 

     And china, even my everyday plates and bowls are now no longer produced, perhaps they merit inclusion! 

     And what about my discarded ‘vintage’ keyboard, that surely has a right to be catalogued, though as I no longer have the box I cannot get full dollar for its resale value!  And the keyboard suggests that old computers and aged but not discarded mobile phones should be candidates for inclusion.  But, perhaps I am getting beyond myself and I should stick, at first, with the more conventional elements of art.

     The research for this is going to be fun!  And I hope informative, though the accusation of cui bono could always be levelled against such an enterprise.  As if mere logic and utility have ever been compelling guiding principles for me!

 

It’s the thinness of a piece of pork lion that makes the difference.  At least this is what I have been told by Toni, who has rejected the present pieces of meat that we have and demanded daintier.

     And that gave me an opportunity.  There was no way that I was going to throw out a whole tranche of loins (or lions as I first wrote) because they were a few millimetres too big.  So, I decided to make a stew.  It’s a long time since I’ve made a decent stew and I am looking forward to dinner this evening when Day 1 of the stew will be sampled.

     The real joy of stew is not the Day 1, run-of-the-mill offering that you get (satisfying though it often is) but rather the Day 3 or Day 4 version with the delicious accretions that make each Day of Stew wonderfully different.

     It will, alas, be a singular pleasure as Toni deigns to eat such things – and it is also the reason that the stew might last until Day 4!

     At some point I always weaken and add curry powder and perhaps a few pieces of pasta to the softened potatoes already there and, together with a few nuts and some dried fruit always give it a bit of a zing!

     Just in case all of the preceding sounds a little too professional, I have just realized (having taken the finished stew off the hob) that I have added no onions, garlic or leeks – which were specifically bought in our last jaunt to the shops (to get out of the house) to add the flavour that all expect.  I am now debating whether to go back downstairs and add the ingredients that nobody (nobody) forgets or wait until tomorrow to give an entirely different taste to the experience.

     The hell with it!  What’s an extra hour with a slow cooked stew?  I’ll add them before I settle down to a little artistic research!

     Essential ingredients duly added – roll on dinner!